Blog

Training physicians in the science of compassion not only makes for more caring physicians, it improves their abilities as clinicians and may help prevent burnout, said Dominic O. Vachon, MDiv, PhD during his Baldwin Seminar Series presentation at the ACGME offices May 22, 2019.

As part of its commitment to staff and community well-being, the ACGME is partnering with Hope For The Day, a Chicago-based non-profit organization dedicated to mental health support and suicide prevention.

The Caribbean nation of Haiti faces unique challenges in putting its philosophy that “health care is a right” into practice. Kerling Israel, MD, MPH described the work of Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante (PIH/ZL) to improve the nation’s health care through graduate medical education (GME), and outlined the challenges faced and progress made in her recent Baldwin Seminar Series presentation, “Improving Graduate Medical Education in Haiti through Collaborative Work.” The talk was presented April 3, 2019 at the ACGME offices in Chicago. This talk was also the first of the series to be streamed online for a live audience.

The 2019 ACGME Annual Educational Conference was a remarkable event this year. A record 3,739 attendees gathered to learn, to network, and most importantly, to Rediscover Meaning in Medicine. We want to thank all of the speakers, poster presenters, awardees, other attendees, Board and Committee members, staff members, exhibitors, and other participants who helped make this another outstanding and successful year for the Annual Educational Conference.

Associate Program Director Kimberly Collins, MD of Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in Saint Petersburg, Florida set out to see how simulating conversations about social determinants of health (as opposed to in-class learning or immersion-based training) affected a resident’s or fellow’s ability to broach and explore these complex, often sensitive, subjects with patients and their parents. Her results are recorded in her poster: Improving Resident Comfort with Discussing Social Determinants of Health through Simulation.

Kelli Corning is the Associate Director of the University of Washington’s internal medicine residency program. She has been actively involved in program coordinator activities throughout her career in GME and participated in the full Annual Educational Conference, and also presented at the pre-conference Coordinator Forum. Additionally, this year Ms. Corning was a recipient of the ACGME’s GME Program Coordinator Excellence Award, which she received at the conference.

During their presentation “Using Public Data to Follow Graduates into Practice,” at the 2019 Annual Educational Conference, Marc M. Triola, MD and Patrick M. Cocks, MD, from the NYU School of Medicine have leveraged large databases of publicly available information to help understand the patterns of health care practice and outcomes among graduates from programs once they have left the programs.

John V. Pamula, MD, FACP, led a quality improvement project focused on reducing burnout and increasing well-being among its residents. His poster, Multipronged Strategies to Improve Wellbeing and Work-Life Balance of Residents, was presented at the 2019 Annual Educational Conference, Engaging Each Other: Rediscovering Meaning in Medicine.